$11 billion Calif. water bond yanked from ballot

ENVIRONMENT

Updated 10:51 pm, Thursday, July 5, 2012

A massive $11 billion bond intended to pay for what lawmakers in 2009 said was a crucial upgrade of California's water infrastructure has been pulled from the November ballot and delayed until 2014.

The Legislature voted for the postponement Thursday, the second time lawmakers have removed the proposition from the state ballot. It was a move leaders had been talking about for months. Gov. Jerry Brown said in January he supports a delay, which means the bond won't be on the same ballot with the governor's tax-raising measure.

Lawmakers backed the move for a variety of reasons, including avoiding what many saw as certain defeat if voters were faced this November with a tax raise and a huge bond. They also want an opportunity to shrink the bond to remove some elements that critics have said would be wasteful spending.

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Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, instrumental in getting the bond proposal and other water-related legislation passed in 2009, defended the spending that some view as excessive as necessary to winning the required two-thirds majority vote from the Legislature to approve the bond.

However, Steinberg said the total price tag needs to come down.

"This bond needs to be smaller. Everyone needs to give up some portion of their piece of it and that work ought to be done sooner rather than later if we're really serious about passing a bond measure in 2014," Steinberg said.

The major elements of the bond include:

-- $3 billion for new storage projects, which could be above or below ground reservoirs

-- $2.25 billion for restoration projects in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta

-- $1.79 billion for ecosystem and watershed protection and restoration projects throughout the state

-- $1.05 billion for projects to ensure water supply reliability

-- $1 billion for projects to clean groundwater

-- $1 billion for water recycling projects

-- Nearly $500 million for drought relief projects

Critics of the bond, who want it repealed altogether, said some of the spending included in those categories has little or nothing to do with a comprehensive, statewide solution to the state's long-standing water needs.

'Pork-filled' spending

Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, said she counts more than $800 million in unnecessary spending, including for interpretive centers in the Sierra Nevada and at the Bolsa Chica Wetlands in Huntington Beach. The bond also includes $100 million for Lake Tahoe, which Wolk noted drains into Nevada.

"This is the second time (the bond delay) is in front of us. It remains unaffordable, it remains pork-filled and untenable and it really should be repealed," she said, though she voted in favor of a simple delay.

The bond currently is a general obligation bond, which means the debt would be paid out of the general fund over several decades at a cost of hundreds of millions to over a billion dollars per year.

Other lawmakers, many from the Central Valley where leaders in the agriculture industry are strongly supporting the bond, also approved the delay but said readjusting the funding in the bond would be a major mistake.

Sen. Tom Berryhill, R-Modesto, said it took 10 years of negotiations to get to the point where two-thirds of the Legislature could agree to place such a bond on the ballot.

"We can't open this damn thing up again," Berryhill said during the debate on the Senate floor. "To open it up would take us another 10 years to put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

Other projects continue

The delay won't affect the announcement of Brown's plan to build what may be a modern-day peripheral canal. The governor's administration says the project would meet the "co-equal" goals of delta restoration and water reliability. That project could be massive tunnels under the delta to take water directly from the Sacramento River to pumps that move the water to the Central Valley and Southern California.